National Iranian American Council – Page 19

Iran Regime Breaks Nuclear Agreement Already

November 11, 2015 by admin

Iran Regime Breaks Nuclear Agreement Already

The 159 pages in the nuclear agreement with the Iran regime is by the standards of most international agreements, pretty flimsy, but even its meager few pages specify clearly the expectations the rest of the world has for the regime’s centrifuges used to enrich uranium: dismantling them.

Reuters reported that the regime has halted work in dismantling centrifuges at the Natanz and Fordow nuclear enrichment plants. The nuclear agreement struck last July specified that initial dismantling work would begin on some 10,000 decommissioned centrifuges at the two facilities.

The halt in work was announced by Ali Shamkhani, secretary of the National Security Council for the regime, who was quoted as saying by the ISNA student news agency that “the (dismantling) process stopped with a warning.”

He did not specify what the warning was or who issued it, but the head of the regime parliament’s nuclear deal commission, Alireza Zakani, told Mehr news agency that the dismantling had stopped in Fordow because of a letter to Hassan Rouhani from a group of lawmakers complaining that the dismantling process was moving too swiftly and contradicted directives from top mullah Ali Khamenei.

Khamenei has publicly stated his opposition to several terms within the treaty, including refusal to allow regime military facilities to be inspected and the need for all Western sanctions to be lifted at once before the regime would comply fully with the agreement.

Khamenei has also said the deal should only be implemented once allegations of past military dimensions of the regime’s nuclear program had been settled.

The International Atomic Energy Agency is expected to announce its conclusions on PMD by Dec. 15, according to Reuters.

The 10,000 older, decommissioned centrifuges are only half of what the regime has available to it to enrich low-grade uranium into highly enriched weapons-grade fuel. The nuclear agreement only allows for the regime to actively use a few thousand centrifuges for medical and scientific research purposes.

As Rick Moran in American Thinker notes, “there’s very little difference between the so-called ‘hardliners’ and those the Western press has designated as ‘moderates.’ And Rouhani may try to use the hardliners as an excuse to not fully implement the deal. Supreme Leader Khamenei has already redefined key elements of the deal to favor Iran’s nuclear program, which Rouhani will probably cite when he violates the terms of the agreement as we go along.”

It is clear now that the regime has no intention of complying with the nuclear agreement and in fact is doing everything it can to push the West with aggressive moves designed to take advantage of the Obama administration’s lame duck political status and lack of desire to force a confrontation on the eve of U.S. presidential elections.

This is why the mullahs in Tehran have doubled down on wiping out opposition to Assad in Syria with a new offensive alongside Russia, test fired a new ballistic missile that violates United Nations Security Council restrictions, attacked and killed Iranian resistance members in Iraq, smuggled new arms to Houthi rebels in Yemen, completed the sale of advanced anti-aircraft missiles from Russia, and cracked down at home by arresting and jailing dissidents and inflaming ethnic tensions with the Azeri minority group in northern Iran.

All of this has been done because the mullahs have already decided to break from the nuclear agreement and see the opportunity for significant gains in the absence of any real threat of retaliation from the U.S. and the rest of the world.

As the Iran lobby, led by the National Iranian American Council, put so eloquently during the debate over the nuclear agreement, the choice for Americans was between “war” and “peace.”

In fact, they were correct, but only in reverse. Approving the pact has surely put the world on a more dangerous path towards greater conflict, while rejecting it may very well have stopped Iranian aggression and brought about stability in the region.

By Michael Tomlinson

Myth of Hardliners vs. Moderates in the Iran Regime

November 9, 2015 by admin

Myth of Hardliners vs. Moderates in the Iran Regime

One of the cornerstones of the arguments made by the Iran lobby in favor of the nuclear agreement with the Iran regime was that its passage would empower “moderate” coalitions within Iran to push against “hardliners” in opening up the regime to the outside world.

It was a nice fairy tale, but like most children’s stories, it’s not based in facts or the real world. Regime advocates such as Trita Parsi and Reza Marashi of the National Iranian American Council and Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund yelled from the rooftops that the nuclear deal would serve as the bridge towards a more open and inclusive relationship between the regime and the rest of the world.

But the reality has been very different and well documented as the mullahs in Tehran doubled down on a policy of aggressive militarism in Syria and Yemen, while also launching a new brutal crackdown at home with scores of new arrests and executions that have been widely condemned by human rights and dissident groups.

But for Iran, the mythology of the “moderate” factions within a fractured government is just too good to let go, so the regime continues to push the story of a “battle” within the regime as personified by Hassan Rouhani leading the charge for moderation and inclusiveness vs. Ali Khamenei and the hardline elements in the military and judiciary.

Many Western news media are lulled into the same storyline by giving it plenty of play such events over the weekend in which Rouhani gave a broadcast speech in which he criticized “hardline media” hinting that some outlets are connected to security forces responsible for a wave of recent arrests in the country aimed at crippling Western influence, according to the New York Times.

The Times dutifully reported that Rouhani had spoken out against the wave of arrests and leveled a veiled criticism at the regime’s 12-member Guardian Council at the potential exclusion of candidates in the upcoming elections.

First of all, the mere fact that Rouhani could be criticizing the Guardian Council for restricting candidates is particularly ironic since it was the Council that cleared the pathway for Rouhani to become president by eliminating hundreds of potential candidates.

Also, the reporting of this so-called rift reveals the knowledge and cultural gap Western news media have about the workings of the regime government. The authority vested in Khamenei is near absolute, as is his control over the military, judiciary and economy. Rouhani’s portfolio by comparison is Spartan at best and serves largely to fulfill the policies and goals of the religious cadre of mullahs that run Iran.

Khamenei, and by extension the mullahs, were interested in a nuclear deal solely to relieve the regime of crippling economic sanctions that were threatening their grip on power by inciting an increasingly restive Iranian people to protests against the impoverished lives they were living.

The object for Khamenei was to secure release of billions of dollars in frozen assets and be given a free pass by the West to pursue his goals without fear of retaliation of threatened new sanctions. To that end, Khamenei achieved his goals which is why he has embarked on his latest plans to secure his domestic base by cracking down on dissidents and the media; even going so far as to arrest another American, Siamak Namazi who is closely tied to Rouhani, and launch a deadly attack on Camp Liberty in Iraq which houses members of the Iranian resistance.

Given the regime’s past history of dealing with internal dissent, including the ouster of officials who speak out against Khamenei or imprisonment of dissenters, one wonders why Rouhani would risk censure or even expulsion by Khamenei for his perceived bold statements supporting a free press and opposing Khamenei.

Simply put: Because it’s just a show. Rouhani always has been and remains a loyal foot solider for the regime and was hand selected by Khamenei for his post. His value to Khamenei comes from being perceived by the West as a “moderate” face. This allows Khamenei the luxury of running the oldest scam anyone watching a police procedural like “Law and Order” would recognize.

Rouhani is the good cop to Khamenei’s bad cop.

Together they have manipulated the West into believing the idea of a schism within Iran to the extent the West needs to do more to help empower Rouhani against the “hardliners.” In essence, the nuclear negotiations are not over for Iran; they never stopped. For Khamenei and Rouhani, the nuclear agreement is still being negotiated and the West needs to deliver in order to gain the regime’s continued “compliance.”

This was evident in the inspection of the Parchin military site by the International Atomic Energy Agency after it had been scrubbed and sanitized. It was also shown by the invitation from the U.S. to include Iran in international talks on Syria even after Iran mullahs mounted a large-scale offensive there alongside Russia.

Sadly Western governments seem to be playing the game the mullah Rouhani and Khamenei want them to, pretending that there are “moderates” within a regime that has plus 2000 executions on his record just during the recent two years.

By Michael Tomlinson

The Clenched Fist of the Iran Regime

November 7, 2015 by admin

The Clenched Fist of the Iran Regime

The Wall Street Journal editorialized yesterday about the downfall of the hopes of backers of the Iran nuclear deal in a new, more moderate Iran opening up to the West in the wake of the landmark agreement. It even included a non-too slightly snarky aside about the anticipation the New York Times had about the potential of leading guided tours of the wonders of Iran.

Instead, the Journal rightly outlines the abrupt downward spiral the mullahs in Tehran have charted instead; most especially the spat of arrests the regime has undertaken targeting journalists, dissidents and most disturbing of all: American citizens.

“In recent days Tehran has arrested two U.S. citizens, bringing to five the number of Americans known to be under Iranian lock and key. They include Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, who has spent nearly 500 days in prison. Former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati has been imprisoned since 2011 on espionage charges, and Saaed Abedini, a Muslim-born convert to Christianity, was arrested in 2012 on charges of leading an underground house-church movement,” the Journal said.

Interestingly though was the Journal’s insight into the arrest of Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-born American businessman who has been an outspoken advocate of closer U.S.-Iranian ties, even collaborating with Trita Parsi in help support the National Iranian American Council, one of the regime’s chief lobbying vehicles.

Namazi had even worked in the Iranian Housing Ministry under the presidency of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, now perceived to be a moderate, but widely considered a theological hardliner back in the day; all of which goes to prove that the Iran regime is undergoing the same ideological purges that marked the worst of the Stalinist purges of the 1930s.

“Some speculate that the arrests are part of Mr. Khamenei’s effort to underscore his regime’s ideological purity and beat back domestic calls for reform. But the Islamic Republic has been in the business of taking hostages since its beginning, no matter whether the president is a reputed moderate like current leader Hasan Rouhani, or a firebrand like predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,” said the Journal.

“When it comes to the Islamic Republic, international goodwill is invariably met with contempt and cruelty. In the wake of the nuclear deal, this is a lesson the West will have to learn all over again,” it added.

The Journal’s lesson is plain to see now as the evidence is now overwhelming that for the mullahs, the nuclear deal isn’t worth the paper it was printed on, but the mullahs recognize correctly that the Obama administration is willing to overlook virtually any violations or aggressions by Iran in order to protect the appearance of preserving a historic foreign policy win.

The mullahs have also correctly calculated that the time remaining before U.S. presidential elections in 2016 literally amounts to a fire sale and they are racing to sweep anything and everything they can before the sale ends.

This includes a number of moves that have come to light further illustrating just how far Ali Khamenei and his fellow mullahs are willing to go to secure their goals.

The Guardian printed a story in which it tracked the recruitment, training and flow of Afghan refugees living in Iran and Syria by the regime and sent to die on Syrian battlefields.

“Iran is recruiting Afghan refugees to fight in Syria, promising a monthly salary and residence permits in exchange for what it claims to be a sacred endeavor to save Shia shrines in Damascus,” Dehghan writes. “The Fatemioun military division of Afghan refugees living in Iran and Syria is now the second largest foreign military contingent fighting in support of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, after the Lebanese militia Hezbollah.”

Horrifically enough, the Guardian revealed that the Iran regime was accepting Afghans below the age of 18. At least one 16-year-old Iran-based Afghan refugee was killed in Syria earlier this year. The allowance for child fighters is a tactic that both the Iran regime, ISIS and Al-Qaeda all share.

Most Iran-based Afghans, who are also Shia, are not going to Syria to risk their lives on religious grounds but because of the financial and stability benefits that their involvement will bring to them and their families. Nearly 1 million Afghans are registered as refugees in Iran but the country is believed to host at least 2 million more that are living there illegally.

In another sign of the growing provocations by the regime, Bahrain convicted five Bahrainis of conspiring with Iran to carry out attacks within the country. Bahrain charged that Tehran was trying to foment unrest in their country by providing training to two of the Bahrainis involved and communicating with the others through the regime’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.

This follows an incident last month in which Bahrain security forces uncovered a large bomb-making factory and arrested a number of suspects linked to the Revolutionary Guards.

All of which shows that not only there are no signs of moderation in Iran, but its moving more and more in the opposite direction.

By Michael Tomlinson

The Trade Off of Human Rights with Iran Regime

November 4, 2015 by admin

Even though the Iran regime has consistently disregarded basic human rights since the revolution in 1979, the world has evolved its approach to this blatant brutality from stern opposition to debased appeasement.

The human rights situation in Iran has gotten progressively worse to a point where the United Nations appointed a Special Rapporteur for Human Rights just for Iran. Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, the special rapporteur, released another in a series of critical reports documenting human rights abuses within the regime.

Entitled “The Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the report reveals that Iranians are worse off under the allegedly “moderate” reign of Hassan Rouhani than under the despised Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

While the regime is on pace to execute an astounding 1,000 people this year, the report discusses other brutal acts such as “more than 480 persons flogged during the first 15 days of Ramadan for not fasting.” Also, two people convicted of theft had their limbs amputated mere weeks before the concluded nuclear deal. This is while money laundering and embezzlements by high rank mullahs and officials of the regime, worth of billions of dollars continue unabated.

A man identified as “Hamid S.” reportedly had his left eye and right ear surgically removed in January of this year after being found guilty of attacking another man with acid in 2005, which caused the victim to lose the same body parts. Another man was also forcibly blinded in March of this year in a process known as qisas, or “retribution-in-kind,” for throwing acid on another man in 2009, according to Breitbart News.

While these human rights violations continue relentlessly and have actually increased in severity and frequency after passage of the nuclear agreement, the Obama administration has oddly continued to make qualitative distinctions in picking and choosing options in dealing with a militant Iran regime.

Those distinctions were on display when Rick Stengel, the U.S. undersecretary of state for diplomacy and public affairs, appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program to promote “The International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists.”

Under questioning by hosts Joe Scarborough and Mike Brezinski, Stengel struggled to answer why the U.S. had not been able to secure the release of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and other American hostages.

He spent some of the interview explaining why Rezaian’s plight was less important than the overall nuclear issue, according to Business Insider.

He ended up implying that crimes against even American journalists are, at best, a midlevel priority for US foreign policy — an especially awkward tactic, considering the point of his appearance was to discuss US efforts to end impunity for crimes against journalists.

“Stengel perhaps didn’t intend to do this, but he bluntly illustrated the trade-offs in the US’s Iran policy. If you’re going to prioritize arms control above everything else, then it stands to reason that press freedom — and even the freedom and protection of US citizens — is secondary to other, supposedly higher concerns,” writes Armin Rosen in the Business Insider piece.

“Taken one way, Stengel is giving opponents of the US a recipe for getting a relatively free pass on both human rights and the harassment of American citizens. But he’s also admitting that there are unsavory trade-offs at the heart of the Obama administration’s biggest foreign-policy accomplishment,” he concludes.

Rosen is correct and points out why American policy towards the Iran regime is flawed from the start, because it does not recognize the monolithic nature of regime policy as formulated and pursued by the mullahs in Tehran.

As a religious theocracy, Iranian regime is uniformly and unconditionally devoted to its first and primary goal; preserving the Velayat-e-Faqih rule (supremacy of regime’s Supreme Leader on all aspects of the Iranian people’s lives) and the state it spawned.

Efforts to appease Tehran such as the nuclear deal, inviting Iran to talks on Syria, rescinding calls to remove Assad from power, and failing to tie human rights to agreements, all feed into the regime belief that it does not have to do anything to accommodate the West in order to achieve its goals.

This has been shown in yet another way when the International Atomic Energy Agency claimed that the regime had begun the process of shutting down its nuclear centrifuges as part of the nuclear agreement, only to have the spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran contradict those claims.

“AEOI’s goal in nuclear negotiations was to minimize the limitations so that they would not deprive the country from nuclear technology, said Behrooz Kamalvandi as quoted in regime-run media. “He pointed out that Iran also wanted its enrichment program to be recognized and the sanctions to be terminated at the same time.”

The regime also showed its disregard for international concerns as it arrested a Lebanese-born tech executive with ties to U.S. businesses. The announcement was the first word from Iran on Nizar Ahmad Zakka, whose colleagues said he did not board a scheduled flight from Tehran on Sept. 18 after attending a conference. Zakka’s organization is an information and communications technology group that has offices in Lebanon, Iraq and Washington.

The arrest follows the arrest of Siamak Namazi, a regime supporter with close ties to the Iran lobby through the National Iranian American Council and its head, Trita Parsi.

On top of which also comes word that an Iranian actress was forced to flee after being criticized for publishing pictures on social media showing her without traditional Muslim head coverings, or hijab.

Her situation is even more striking given the recent leadership conference for the NIAC, which devoted a large section to a discussion on the arts in Iran and why there should be optimism about them.

Paradoxically, while artists, actors and journalists are forced to flee Iran, NIAC notes its belief that economic sanctions have hurt the arts in Iran and never mentions the crackdown on the Iranian creative community by the regime.

We can only hope for a day when Iran’s religious government is changed to a democratic, secular one that respects the rights of women and journalists.

By Michael Tomlinson

What the Taking of Another American by Iran Regime Tells Us

November 2, 2015 by admin

What the Taking of Another American by Iran Regime Tells Us

The sudden and surprising arrest by Iran regime officials of Siamak Namazi raised the eyebrows of many veteran Iran watchers; not the least because Namazi has been an integral part of efforts to build a lobbying force in the U.S. used to support the regime’s political goals, namely passage of a just-completed nuclear agreement.

In fact, the ties between Namazi and Trita Parsi, the founder of the National Iranian American Council and leading lobbyist for the regime, have been well documented, all of which raised the question of why would regime leaders order the arrest of one of their own?

The very question indicates how wrong most analysts are about Iranian mullahs in the first place. Many people, including apparently Namazi, long assumed that if you towed the party line of the mullahs, you were always going to be in their good graces and in Namazi’s case, he hoped to reap the financial rewards that came from that association in the form of guiding foreign investment into Iran following the nuclear deal.

But what he failed to understand and what many others have failed to grasp even as they tried appeasing these same mullahs is that they are never going to allow anyone into their tight circle of control who does not follow their proscribed fundamentalist and extremist religious beliefs.

For the mullahs in Tehran, the coin of the realm is not just money; the constitution vests absolute authority with Ali Khamenei and his cadre of mullahs who oversee the judiciary, military and foreign affairs and vast tracts of the economy, while have an unrelaxing temptation for expansion of their authorities in to neighboring countries.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps wields disproportionate influence through its monopolistic control of entire industries such as telecommunications, petroleum, finance and agriculture. Iran’s theocracy controls planning of the economy and dispenses its meager rewards to the Iranian people, while reserving the bulk of the financial gains for its elites, their families and the military campaigns it funds overseas in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

For Namazi and Parsi and their fellow Iran lobbyists, the suddenness of the arrest was jarring, but it should have not comes as a complete surprise since the mullahs have long practiced the art of score-settling amongst their factions with sham trials, imprisonments and even executions.

But unlike what Parsi and his ilk would have the rest of the world believe, the fight in Iran’s leadership is not between “moderates” and “hardliners,” but in fact is between factions of corrupt mullahs bickering over the booty they rob from the Iranian people. The fact that every effort to promote a “moderate” faction within Iran has met with utter failure is indicative not of the lack of passion within the Iranian people for regime change, but rather the ruthless willingness of the mullahs to use deadly force against their own people to keep tight their grip on power.

Also since signing of the nuclear agreement, Khamenei has made it his mission to remind the world the he does not view adherence to the terms of the agreement to be beneficial to the regime, nor indispensable. In fact, in his mind, anything that compromises the extremist Islamic fanaticism is the antithesis of what the mullahs want. For Khamenei, getting a $150 billion check from unfrozen assets with no strings attached is the best possible alternative.

Khamenei is eager for the money in order to continue funding his vision of an expanding Islamic sphere of influence stretching from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, but he does not want to jeopardize it with young Iranians clamoring for access to Snapchat on their iPhones while wearing clothes from Old Navy, which is why the arrest of Namazi, a putative supporter of the regime, tells us clearly that the regime intends to be the one calling the shots and not the other way around.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Turns on Its Own

October 29, 2015 by admin

Trita Parsi traveled with Siamak Namazi to Isfahan, Iran’s third largest city, in August 2000. They also toured the Zoroastrian “Fire of Victory” Temple in Yazd.
At the time, Siamak was living in Tehran, working for Atieh Bahar, a consultant company with close ties to the government.
In 1999, Parsi and Siamak co-authored a paper that recommended setting up a lobbying organization in Washington to influence US-Iran policy. Siamak took a sabbatical in 2005 to complete a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. While at the Center, Siamak helped Parsi formulate NIAC policies supportive of the Iranian regime.

Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American citizen, has been credited with helping found the Iran lobby including the creation of the National Iranian American Council alongside Trita Parsi as the primary vehicle for advocating for a nuclear agreement lifting economic sanctions on the regime.

The Daily Beast chronicled his family’s involvement as an “intellectual architect” for the NIAC as a pathway for empowering those within the regime whom he had a close relationship with and believed by helping secure an agreement it would boost his fortunes within the regime.

In the immortal words of Kevin Spacey who plays the scheming Frank Underwood on Netflix’s “House of Cards,” “We’re all victims of our own hubris at times.”

Truer words were never spoken about the Iran lobby because on the verge of reaping their perceived successes, they discover all they really are, are puppets for a regime of mullahs whose intent is only focused on preserving their own power.

That is because according to regime media reports, while visiting family in Tehran, Namazi was arrested by Revolutionary Guards Corp soldiers and tossed into the notorious Evin Prison.

There is an irony here on par with Alfred Nobel inventing dynamite and then creating the Nobel Peace Prize after his invention was used in war.

Namazi joins four other Americans who are being held hostage by the regime, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, Christian pastor Saeed Abedini, former Marine Amir Hekmati and the former FBI agent Robert Levinson.

According to a piece in American Thinker, Parsi and Namazi founded NIAC as a way to lobby for the removal of sanctions against the regime and promote its foreign policy while combatting anti-regime forces in the U.S.

Both Parsi and Namazi reportedly enjoyed close ties and access to Hassan Rouhani and Javad Zarif, the regime’s president and foreign minister, with Parsi being seen traveling with and in close discussions with the regime delegation during nuclear talks.

Conspicuously, the NIAC have been silent on the issue, declining comment and social media feeds for Parsi and other NIAC staff is devoid of any mention of the arrest.

But Hassan Dai, editor of the Iranian American Forum who won a defamation lawsuit filed against him by Parsi, speculated that the arrest suggests a power struggle of sorts within the regime’s leadership.

Dai explained in an interview with Breitbart News that Namazi had consistently “lobbied in favor of a faction of the regime,” which upset the mullahs because it would only be acceptable to “lobby for the whole regime.”

The fight between the factions in Iran is a fight for “the best solution to preserve the regime,” he explained, adding that groups like NIAC have never sided with true “reformists,” but with people who wish to employ a different strategy to empower the regime, such as Rouhani and former President Akbar Rafsanjani.

Because Namazi and NIAC prefer one faction over the other, “they are undermining the Supreme Leader. They are undermining the Revolutionary Guard,” Dai explained. “When you lobby U.S. policymakers to remove sanctions against Iran with the rationale that it will help reform the regime, you undermine the Supreme Leader, because he wants them to accommodate to the regime now.”

The arrest of Namazi sends a message from Iran’s rulers that “Rouhani has no power,” Dai concluded. “He cannot even protect his own friend.”

Breitbart News further speculates – and rightly so – that the arrest pours cold water on the notion that securing the nuclear deal would empower “moderates” within the regime and help reform it. Evidence since agreeing to the nuclear contradicts that idea completely with the conviction of Rezaian, the test launch of an illegal ballistic missile and the launching of a new offensive in Syria alongside Russian forces.

The arrest of Namazi demonstrates that the leadership of the Iran regime is of one mind and firmly in the control of Ali Khamenei and his religious cohorts and that any idea of moderation within the regime is a pipe dream; which may go to explain why coming off of the NIAC’s recent leadership conference to celebrate the nuclear deal, Parsi’s Twitter feed was filled with posts condemning Saudi Arabia, a bitter enemy of Iran and locked in fighting in Yemen.

If Parsi doesn’t tow the mullahs’ line, he might find a different kind of reception party the next time he travels to Tehran and end up sitting next to his buddy Namazi.

By Michael Tomlinson

Halloween Comes Early for Iran Lobby

October 27, 2015 by admin

Halloween Comes Early for Iran Lobby

Halloween involves kids (and adults) firing up their imaginations to come up with costumes and then go knocking door to door seeking treats and getting the odd trick played on them maybe in a haunted house. For the Iran lobby, Halloween came a week early as the chief advocate, the National Iranian American Council, held its annual leadership conference this weekend.

It’s worth noting that the NIAC bills its event as a premier conference for the nation’s Iranian-American community, but its agenda and participants hardly represent the views and beliefs of the estimated one million Iranian-Americans living in the U.S.

In fact, the line-up of speakers at this year’s conference reads more like a line-up card of Iran regime boosters and potential business partners than any group seriously examining the daunting challenges remaining between the U.S. and Iran. What is even more amazing are the lack of any speakers who have first-hand experience with the abysmal human rights situation in Iran, nor were there any speakers offering views on the sizable opposition worldwide to the regime amongst the Iranian diaspora.

Among the highlights of this gallery of apologists and appeasers includes:

Bijan Khajehpour, who founded Atieh International and the related Atieh Bahar which employed NIAC staffers to serve as a conduit for directing foreign companies to invest into the regime through the access it provided to top regime officials who controlled most of Iran’s economy through a complex web of shadow companies. Atieh was the subject of an in-depth piece in The Daily Beast on its start and close relationship with leading supporters of the regime and how it profited from those ties and in advocating for a lifting of sanctions against Iran;
Joseph Cirincione, president of Ploughshares Fund which was the largest funder of the lobbying campaign in support of the nuclear deal and the lifting of sanctions against the regime. It alone provided NIAC with at $150,000 for its advocacy work on behalf of the nuclear deal; not including money given by its staff. Commentary Magazine poured through tax records to glean the wide scope of Ploughshares giving to groups working on behalf of the regime’s cause; and
Alan Eyre, the U.S. State Department’s Persian-language spokesman who came under fire recently for promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy sites demonizing American Jewish groups, as well as postings on his personal social media praising the regime’s controversial Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani according to the Washington Free Beacon. Eyre also posted links to Lobelog, a well-known blog dedicated to supporting the regime’s key messages.

The conference also featured several speakers who are actively seeking business deals within the regime including: Ned Lamont, chairman of Lamont Digital Systems; Jay Pelosky, a self-described advisor on emerging markets who recently visited Iran; and Amir Handjani, president of PG International Commodity Trading Services, a leading importer of agricultural commodities in the Iranian market.

We can’t resist one dig at Reza Marashi of NIAC who called the gathering the “world cup of Iranian-Americans.”

One interesting tidbit were comments made by Dr. Farideh Farhi who lamented the fact the nuclear deal had not led to substantial changes in U.S. policy towards the regime, but failed to note the swift shifts in Iranian policy towards the rest of the world in the rapid buildup of its military in Syria and launching of a new ballistic missile in violation of United Nations Security Council sanctions; both provocative acts.

This was followed by a tweet by Trita Parsi, NIAC’s head honcho, who described comments made by Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Mehdi Hasan, a commentator for Al Jazeera’s English broadcast, as saying about the panic from neighboring Arab nations about the nuclear deal: “If someone panics, you slap them in the face, you don’t indulge them.”

An appropriate comment since it neatly encapsulates the Iran lobby’s response to concerns over what the Iran regime will do now in the wake of the nuclear agreement. The recent rise in belligerent military action, coordination with Russia in blasting Syrian rebels back to the Stone Age and the conviction of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian all point to a slide into anarchy which has even alarmed Democratic lawmakers who initially supported the nuclear deal, but now have begun offering up new legislation designed to keep the regime in check.

The NIAC conference was predictable in celebrating its perceived win with the nuclear deal and the effort now to safeguard potential foreign investment after “Implementation Day” on December 15 when the U.S. will pave the way by lifting economic sanctions and allow Iran to rejoin the world of international commerce.

But the conference also revealed the biggest weaknesses of the lobby which was its inability or unwillingness to meet the most troublesome aspects of the Iran regime head-on; namely it horrific human rights record which leaves a deep and wide trail for the world’s media to follow.

With every arrest, every beating, every public hanging and every denunciation of a minority religious or ethnic group, the regime weakens any argument the lobby can make and increases the pressure on groups such as the NIAC to answer basic questions of “why aren’t you speaking out against the killing of X group?”

Which is why the NIAC conference was so focused on economic issues since the regime is desperate to not only get its hands on the estimated $150 billion in frozen assets to help pay off its military obligations in Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen, but is equally anxious to bring in foreign investment to help prop up an economy devastated by gross mismanagement and corruption by regime officials.

By Laura Carnahan

Iran Regime About to Go All Out in Syria

October 15, 2015 by admin

Iran Regime About to Go All Out in Syria

“This agreement could be the key that unlocks solutions to some of the most intractable conflicts in the Middle East. The region suffers from a diplomacy deficit and the nuclear deal paves the way for an increase in dialogue and diplomacy on a whole set of issues – which is critical for stability in the Middle East,” said Trita Parsi, head of the National Iranian American Council, August 27, 2015.

“Iran has sent hundreds of troops into northern and central Syria in the first such open deployment in the country’s civil war, joining fighters from its Lebanese ally Hezbollah in an offensive against rebels and taking advantage of cover from Russia’s air campaign, a regional official and Syrian activists said Wednesday.

“Their arrival is almost certain to fuel a civil war in Syria which has already claimed the lives of more than 250,000 people and displaced half of the country’s population. It also highlights the far-reaching goals of Russia’s military involvement in Syria,” from the Associated Press, October 14, 2015.

You have to admire the chutzpah of Trita Parsi to shovel the kind of fragrant stuff he does only to be proven wrong time and time again, which begs the question of why anyone ever listens to him.

As the AP reports that upwards of 1,500 Iranian regime fighters begin arriving in Damascus, the picture in Syria is becoming increasingly bleak as combatants from Iran, Syria, Russia, Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, U.S. and pretty much from every country in the European Union now rush in for what promises to be the start of a new phase of bloody sectarian conflict.

What is even more impressive about Parsi’s comment only two months ago was that he held out the promise of diplomacy when the Iran regime in fact had absolutely no interest in diplomacy. Instead, the mullahs are committed to a path of military conquest in an all-or-nothing scenario.

Whether intentionally or not, Syria has quickly shaped up to becomes the ultimate bellwether of the ability of the Iran regime to stay alive because of Assad falls, Russia is likely to take a dim view of Iranian promises since Syria contains the only naval base Russia has in the Mediterranean. The loss of Syria would also prove conclusively the mullahs have no ability to expand their dominion beyond using the kinds of terror tactics it has relied on for the past three decades.

The buildup comes as Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian said on Tuesday that Tehran was working with Russia on drafting a peace plan for Syria. But Western powers, and many countries in the Middle East, say Assad must go as a precondition for peace.

Some peace plan, it just requires thousands of Iranian troops to make it work.

But the pending offensive in Syria also serves the Iran regime’s purposes by diverting attention from its other activities throughout the region as Tom Watson points out in The Independent:

“Events in Syria have, however, distracted attention away from Iran’s activities elsewhere in the region. Recently the Iranians were caught supplying weapons to Houthis rebels in Yemen, something Iran has long denied doing. Meanwhile, as a new report for The Henry Jackson Society: ‘Tehran’s Servants’ by Jonathan Spyer demonstrates, Iran has taken control of a vast force of Shia militias in Iraq that are now dominating much of the country. Western leaders may welcome these activities for helping to drive back IS, but no one should be under any illusions about just how extreme these Iranian-backed militias really are,” Watson writes.

“A glance across what is already a very troubled region endlessly turns up signs of Iranian involvement. Tehran has exploited the turmoil to advance its own hegemonic ambitions. It is doing exactly the same with the void left by Obama’s retreat from the world stage. Even as the Iranians look set to adopt the nuclear agreement, the Islamic Republic’s actual conduct rather suggests that the regime in Iran remains far from being a friendly or benign force in the world,” he added.

But why the rush by the regime in so many places around the world at once? The answer is simple: time is the enemy of the mullahs.

A presidential race in the U.S. will usher in what will most likely be a new president un-beholden to the nuclear agreement, and a new Congress eager to pass more sanction legislation against the regime on the wave of American public opinion polls showing vast dissatisfaction with Iran.

Military moves made by the regime have backfired in Syria, Iraq and Yemen and seen their allies in Hezbollah, Houthis and Shiite militias stall and even retreat from gains made earlier this year.

Ali Khamenei’s advanced age and recent health problems add to the uncertainty as does the surge in anti-regime protests that have now stretched into their third year and reveal a vast amount of discontent within the Iranian people.

The mullahs are on the clock and the big push in Syria is their wild last attempt to push all their chips on the table in a desperate bid to hang on.

Now if only Trita Parsi would tell us the offensive is just a new form of diplomacy then the cha rade would be complete.

Michael Tomlinson

What the Conviction of Jason Rezaian Tells Us About Iran Regime

October 13, 2015 by admin

What the Conviction of Jason Rezaian Tells Us About Iran Regime

News media and journalists around the world have reacted strongly to the announcement that Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian had been convicted in an espionage trial after 14 months of imprisonment. The verdict from the Revolutionary Court was reported through regime state television, but not the specific decision even though the trial ended in August.

According to the Washington Post, “Rezaian faced four charges — the most serious of which was espionage — and it was not immediately clear whether he was convicted of all charges. Rezaian and The Post have strongly denied the accusations, and his case has drawn wide-ranging denunciations including statements from the White House and media freedom groups.”

Depending on which charges he was convicted on, Rezaian could face upwards of 20 more years in prison.

“Iran has behaved unconscionably throughout this case, but never more so than with this indefensible decision by a Revolutionary Court to convict an innocent journalist of serious crimes after a proceeding that unfolded in secret, with no evidence whatsoever of any wrongdoing,” said Martin Baron, executive editor of the Post, in a statement.

“The contemptible end to this ‘judicial process’ leaves Iran’s senior leaders with an obligation to right this grievous wrong,” Baron said. “Jason is a victim — arrested without cause, held for months in isolation, without access to a lawyer, subjected to physical mistreatment and psychological abuse, and now convicted without basis. He has spent nearly 15 months locked up in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, more than three times as long than any other Western journalists.”

Ironically, on October 10, Rezaian passed the dubious milestone of having been locked up in Iran longer than the original 52 American embassy hostages three decades ago.

Rezaian’s case, as well as the plight of other Americans being held in Iranian regime’s prisons; including Amir Hekmati, a former U.S. Marine, and Saeed Abedini, a Christian pastor, are defining signposts of how the Iran regime’s leadership acts, plans, thinks and executes its national policy. They have become unfortunate pawns in a much larger game the mullahs have been playing at for the past three decades.

Abedini of Boise, Idaho, was imprisoned for organizing home churches. Hekmati of Flint, Mich., has spent four years in prison since his arrest during a visit to see his grandmother. Rezaian was accused by the regime of providing information on Iranian companies and individuals violating economic sanctions and thereby providing intelligence to regime foes.

These higher profile victims share a similar fate as countless thousands of other Iranians who have been arrested, tortured, falsely imprisoned and often publicly executed as the regime seeks to stamp out dissent, curb free speech and hang onto people to be used as bargaining chips should it need them.

In the case of the Americans, Hassan Rouhani, the regime’s handpicked leader, openly floated the idea of prisoner swaps with the Americans exchanged for up to 19 Iranian agents convicted of trafficking in arms and smuggling nuclear components for the regime’s nuclear program.

In many ways though, approval the nuclear agreement may have inadvertently sunk hopes of getting these Americans released since the mullahs perceive they got what they originally wanted in the potential lifting of economic sanctions, which raises the question of why would the regime double down and sentence Rezaian when there would be no clear political reason to?

The conviction certainly disproves the idea – long floated by Iran lobbyists such as the National Iranian American Council – that supporting the nuclear deal would empower so-called “moderates” within the Iranian government. If anything, this conviction demonstrates that Ali Khamenei, to whom the courts answer to, is still firmly in charge of the regime’s policies.

What all of this tells us is that the Iran regime leadership does not value human life, other than to use it as a commodity. It tells us the judicial system is controlled and used for political and religious purposes. It tells us there is always linkage in the mullahs’ mindset and willingness to traffic in human life.

The regime shows us every day examples that it views international law and norms with contempt, be it the brutal treatment of its people or the almost daily threats its generals and leaders make against the U.S. and other nations and neighbors.

Alireza Tangsiri, a Revolutionary Guard Corps lieutenant commander, said that suicide bombers are on stand by and ready to “blow up themselves” to “destroy the U.S. warships,” according to remarks made Monday in Iran’s state-controlled Fars News Agency.

“They [the U.S.] have tested us once and if necessary, there are people who will blow up themselves with ammunitions to destroy the U.S. warships,” Tangsiri was quoted as saying.

He added that if the United States takes any hostile action against Iran, the country’s military forces would pursue the Americans into the Gulf of Mexico.

“I declare now that if the enemy wants to spark a war against Iran, we will chase them even to the Gulf of Mexico and we will (certainly) do it,” he said.

The threats come a day after Iran test fired ballistic missiles in the region, in a potential violation of international agreements barring such activity.

That missile, the Emad or “Pillar,” is designed to evade missile defenses and is supposedly much more accurate than previous missile designs, putting neighbors such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and even Southern Europe within range.

While execution of Iranians under Rouhani’s watch is surging, it is more obvious now that despite the Iran Lobby’s pitch, mullahs ruling Iran, emboldened by the concessions received as a result of the flawed Iran deal, are now more of a threat to the international community than ever before.

By Michael Tomlinson

Iran Regime Culture of Terror and Violence Unchanging

October 12, 2015 by admin

Iran Regime Culture of Terror and Violence Unchanging

There are several constants in the universe: the theory of relativity, the speed of light and the single-minded commitment of the Iran regime to its path towards expansion of its vision of extremist Islam using all of the tools at its disposal.

Much has been made about the new nuclear deal with the regime as being a harbinger of improved relations; most of those arguments being exclusively made by the loyal Iran lobby led by the National Iranian American Council, but all of those arguments ignore one essential proof which is the regime has shown through its actions just how committed it is towards its revolutionary vision.

At the heart of the regime’s hold over Iran is its willingness to use brutal force and violence to reign in its opponents and liberal use of its prison system and death penalty to remove the most vocal and troublesome resistance elements. While the modern world is moving towards annihilation of the death penalty, in most nations, that still use death penalty, imposition of the ultimate punishment by the state comes as a last resort and is reserved for the most heinous of crimes; usually those involving mass murder, treason or the cruel torture and murder of a child.

But within the Iran regime, the death penalty and the entire judicial system is under political control and often used to silence dissidents, stifle free speech and oppress the dissatisfied. Within the regime judicial system, its various courts, police and paramilitaries fall under the authority of the top mullah, Ali Khamenei, and its religious courts hold sway over virtually every facet of Iranian life.

All of which came into stark relief this weekend as the United Nations designated World Day Against the Death Penalty and a large gathering was held in Paris of anti-death penalty activists from around the world.

The conference sponsored by the Committee Defending Human Rights in Iran, was entitled, “Iran, Human Rights, Stop Executions” and included notable participants such as Gilbert Mitterrand, former member of the French National Assembly and President of France Libertés (Danielle Mitterrand) Foundation, Phumla Makaziwe Mandela, women’s rights advocate and daughter of Nelson Mandela, the late leader of South Africa, David Jones and Mark Williams, members of the British House of Commons, Hanan Al-Balkhi, representative of the Syrian Coalition in Oslo, and Taher Boumedra, former human rights chief of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq – UNAMI.

According to the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a coalition of leading Iranian resistance groups, there have been over 120,000 executions carried out by the regime, often performed as public hangings from construction cranes. Any casual Google image search of “Iran” and “hangings” produces the grisly bounty of the mullahs.

While the world has been concerned over the plight of notable prisoners such as Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, who has been convicted and sentenced by a regime court in a sham trial, they are but just a tip of what qualifies as one of the largest state-operated political prison systems since the Soviet-era gulags or Khmer Rouge killing fields.

One of those prisoners, Farzad Madadzadeh, told his story in an interview with The Daily Mail where he detailed routine torture including beatings, electrocution, forced drug use and solitary confinement. His only crime: speaking out against the regime.

Last year, the country had the second highest number of executions in the world after China and also killed the most juvenile offenders, according to Human Rights Watch.

And it remains one of the biggest jailers of bloggers, journalists and social media activists, all part of the strategy by the regime to suppress open political dissent and maintain its control over what is increasingly becoming a fractured society chafing underneath three decades of brutal Islamic rule.

But the regime’s reach is not just confined within the borders of Iran. Regime security agents and their proxy allies have launched attacks in places such as Lebanon, Syria and Iraq to get at its political opponents, such as the large number of dissidents from the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran relocated to Camps Ashraf and Liberty and subject to frequent attacks.

The very nature of the regime has given many in Congress pause after approving the nuclear deal, forcing Democrats and Republicans to join and reassess the most pressing question facing them with the 2016 elections looming: What do we do about Iran now?

While the NIAC and other regime allies would have us believe next year will bring economic opportunities and a revival for Iran’s people, the regime’s doubling down in Syria, willingness to call in Russian military aid to save the Assad regime and growing discontent at home points to a year of potentially extreme volatility.

The fact that news came out of a new ballistic missile test by the regime potentially violating the terms of the nuclear agreement tells the world all it needs to know about the Iran regime’s true intentions.

The missile — named Emad, or pillar — is a step up from Iran’s Shahab-3 missiles because it can be guided toward its target, the Iranian defense minister, Hossein Dehghan, told the semiofficial Fars news agency. In recent decades, with Iran’s air force plagued by economic sanctions and other restrictions, the country has invested heavily in its nuclear program and has produced missiles that can reach as far as Europe.

At a time when the world needs to recognize the essential nature of the Iran regime, it is vital that the regime’s most ardent opponents are giving more consideration in developing a strategy to confront the regime.

By Michael Tomlinson